Levett jones clinical reasoning cycle

Becoming a RN: Practice Consolidation

Practice Portfolio of Evidence Part C:

Clinical reasoning discussion paper 50%

Student Resource

The below information aims to add some further depth and detail to that provided in the unit outline as well as a brief overview of the preparations and expectations for the assessment.

What is the aim of the clinical reasoning discussion paper?

The aim of this assessment task (Part C) builds on the previous assessment task (Part B) to ‘close-off’ the clinical reasoning cycle from the exploration of that encounter.

How do I best prepare to undertake this assessment task?

A clear understanding of the clinical reasoning cycle remains important.

In your previous written assessment task in this unit, you were required to explore a clinical encounter up to and including the ‘evaluation’ stage. In this paper, the focus is on extending your ‘evaluation’ phase of the cycle within that encounter and ‘reflect on new learning’ to close the cycle. Therefore, revisiting your clinical reasoning encounter analysis (Part B) is required.

Additionally, within Part B, you were required to select an encounter where something didn’t go to plan or was missed, etc. In this paper (Part C) you are going to explore ‘why’ it didn’t go to plan by selecting TWO of the nine clinical reasoning errors that potentially contributed to this as identified by Levett-Jones. -The clinical reasoning errors are detailed in the final module for this unit and will also feature in the week 9 workshops.

Writing your paper.

Introduction (300 words)

Provide a very brief overview of your clinical encounter that highlights where the error/challenge/missed opportunity occurred (300 words).

Body (700 words)

Upon reviewing the module content and your previous paper, identify TWO clinical reasoning errors that best aligned to, or potentially could have occurred during your encounter that contributed to why that encounter was challenging or perhaps did not go to plan.

Describe those TWO clinical reasoning errors chosen and discuss how these may have occurred and why. How were the errors eventually remedied? how could they have been mitigated? How could it have impacted on patient outcomes if the error was not identified? In this section you may have to recall elements/assessment data from your clinical encounter to contextualise your discussion.

Conclusion (500 words)

‘ Reflect on and process new learning’

From your exploration, consider your future nursing practice. What did you learn? what would you do differently next time? What strategies will you use? How has this enhanced your clinical reasoning skills? This forms a reasonable portion of your paper and therefore you need to demonstrate deep reflection here. Saying ‘I would read more about…..’, etc is not sufficient. We really need to see the encounter as a whole. What have you learnt from this that has better enabled you to ‘think like a registered nurse’.

In addition to the information provided in the unit outline, a rubric is provided to guide your preparation of this assessment task. Word counts for each section are to be considered as a guideline.

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(Levett-Jones, 2018)